The workshop revolution: why these are the most important invites in your diary
In the past couple of years, I've been using more and more cross-team workshops to build plans and develop strategies. Informed by human-centred design and agile principles, they are the most efficient way to encourage people to de-silo their thinking, understand where their expertise and knowledge bring most value and feel ownership of the solution.
Pre-COVID, I ran the Digital Leadership Forum. This was an opportunity for digital leads in the non-profit sector to exchange their experiences and support each other with mentoring and advice. More recently, as part of the Charity Change Collective, I ran a series of workshops for digital leads to address issues with digital transformation in their organisations.
The feedback I always get is that these workshops are super valuable. Participants love getting to use their brains, talent and knowledge. They love having time to think and share their views. They also serve as a very effective learning tool: people tell me they remember workshops I ran even as far back as seven years ago.
However, there’s a challenge in running workshops. People don’t prioritise them, dropping out when something else crops up at work, however small. I sense that workshops aren’t always seen as real work.
So, I’m here to make the case for workshops. Far from just a jolly, they’re a genuinely useful way to create inclusive plans and strategies.
The workshop myth
Why do some people deprioritise workshops? Usually, it’s one or a combination of these elements:
They feel like time off because they’re fun, understandable and sensible: not what planning usually feels like.
Sharing questions and discussions with lots of people feels scary. How do you reach an agreement?
Workshops don’t end with a report, so it’s unclear what the output is.
If workshops aren’t well prepared and facilitated, participants can feel a bit lost. They lose sight of why they’re there and get frustrated with the process.
In peer support workshops, sharing can feel uncomfortable due to organisational loyalty or because work and feelings don’t normally mix.
In my line of work, reports and hierarchic decision-making are sometimes seen as the ‘right’ way of doing things. As your consultant, some feel I should be bringing you all the answers, delivered ready to action. But the reality is that reports, top-down decisions and consultant-led action are just a comfort blanket. Just because there’s a piece of paper at the end, doesn’t mean people feel accountable for those decisions and ideas.
It doesn’t mean things are going to change
I can’t tell you how many excellent strategy docs I’ve seen gathering dust on someone’s hard drive. Sometimes a messy Miro board documenting an expansive workshop is the most valuable evidence of a productive and effective result.
After all, the most important output is outcomes: and to achieve those outcomes, people need to align around an idea or a prioritised plan and feel ownership of them. That is the only way to ensure accountability for those plans.
The workshop magic
My approach to agreeing on problems and finding solutions? It centres around workshops.
Why? Because we start by being honest about problems and what’s not working. We then look for solutions. Then we prioritise them. Together. We look realistically at capacity and timelines, shaping the vision of what we want to achieve in 18 months to 2 years, working backwards to pin down what each person in the room needs to do to make it happen. So when we decide what we will do and what we won’t do, we do it together. It’s not easy. It is messy. But it does spread ownership of decisions and plans wider than any top down approach can.
With workshops, people come out buoyed, full of enthusiasm. They feel heard and that makes them feel more accountable for actions and outcomes.
We tested the workshop approach at the Charity Change Summit recently. Participants thought about common challenges and discussed potential solutions. They emerged inspired. They told us it felt great to share their issues and problems and exchange ideas. (“It’s not just happening to me” is a line I hear so often.) They said they needed more of this kind of activity in their diaries. It felt like they’d only scratched the surface and they wanted much more time to go deeper and achieve more. And they took away action points, things they can actually do when they go back to their organisations.
The mindset shift: Join the workshop revolution
Still not convinced? Here are the 4 big reasons that you or your team leaders should use facilitated workshops in your team or strategy planning:
Carve out proper thinking time (something we so rarely have)
Get everyone involved and their voices heard
Focus on solutions (after getting the frustrations out of our system)
Prioritise together (and yes, that means tough choices on what we won’t do)
I’m a massive cheerleader for workshops as a tool for planning and strategising.
Because I’ve seen the enthusiasm and positive energy people leave those planning sessions with. But the only way to get all this benefit is with thorough preparation and expert facilitation. During the workshop, bring your audience with you at every stage, repeat what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and be very clear on the outcomes and outputs.
And don’t just take my word for it - workshops are productively used in the commercial sector too as I shared in my July blog. Also, my awesome colleagues from the Charity Change Collective Julie Wilson-Dodd and Gareth Ellis-Thomas have run a set of workshops with a bunch of UK non-profits to put together a better, more joyful planning process. You can hear all in this recording.
If you take anything away from this post, let it be that you:
Use facilitated workshops as a planning tool.
Prioritise workshops in your diary: they’ll likely make you much more productive than the meeting you’ll miss. You’ll learn about other people’s motivations and decision-making and build your confidence.
